Tag Archives: Chairman’s Message

Greetings, The month of April has been both very exciting and busy for the leadership of our association. We have just concluded our second Board of Directors’ meeting of the year. Another event in April was the National Congressional Fire Services Institute (CFSI) dinner in Washington D.C. I was able …

As a business owner, I have gone through and witnessed some of the school of hard knocks. Having started a company at a young age with not much more than a hope and a dream, I learned quickly from both the good and the bad experiences. One principle I learned …

Greetings, As we enter into another new year, it is not hard to just take a moment to reflect back on 2017. I think we can all look back at ‘17 and agree it was a pretty good year. The economy around the country was all-in-all robust. Most of us …

As I sit here this morning and reflect back on the last couple of weeks, it is hard for me personally to not just be thrilled. As we know, every two years the AFSA Board of Directors has a change in officers. I have been given the honor of serving …

No industry is immune to the winds of change. We live in fascinating times and in the short span of a score of years we have watched the birth of new industries and the demise of giants. The list of new endeavors is long, stunning, and amazingly quick. What the …

One of the more important functions of your association is to monitor and provide input to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards. AFSA has voting seats that represent contractors on all the major standards: NFPA 13, 13R, 14, 20, 25 and 409 just to name a few. Our technical …

The beginning of the New Year is upon us and it is time to take stock of the past year and look forward to the next. The industry saw solid growth in 2016 with particular strength in multi-family residential construction and commercial construction. Our vendors verified the trend as they …

A different way to measure. There are many ways to measure the health of a company or an industry. All the usual metrics of profits and losses, business cycles, competition, and employee morale, but there is another one that I think is often overlooked. It is people’s charitableness. And as …

We have come a long way from our humble origins 35 years ago to this vibrant city of Nashville in 2016. Vibrant is a good word to describe our convention and our association. By all measures this convention is a record breaker. The number of registrants, exhibitors and rooms booked …

I write this message on the Fourth of July weekend and contemplate leadership. When our association was founded in 1981 we did so as a group of open shop contractors whose business needs and demands were not being addressed. Our founders felt compelled to figure out a way to give open shop …